WASHINGTON DC - U.S. President Donald Trump has called on the Venezuelan military to abandon their president, and to throw their support behind self-declared president Juan Guaido.

Speaking in Miami at the Florida International University on Monday, the president said the U.S. was seeking a peaceful transition of power, but warned that "all options are open."

Addressing Venezuelan soldiers, he said: "You will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. Youll lose everything.

Meantime time U.S. humanitarian aid is banking up on the border at Colombia, and locations in Brazil and elswhere, blocked by the Maduro government from entering the country.

With many Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants in the audience where the president was speaking on Monday, Mr Trump ramped up his distate for both regimes.

The ugly alliance between the two dictatorships is coming to a rapid end, he said, describing Maduro as a Cuban puppet.

There's no doubt that today's speech was part of his electoral campaign and he was speaking not to the Venezuelan people but to the voters in Florida. And that is disappointing, Dany Behar, an economist from Venezuela at the Brookings Institution, told VOA News.